Has present-day science anything to say about this? In spite of the collapse of the supposed biological proofs, are there any tangible and scientifically established proofs in the geological realm?
Professor Price, who, as noted above, is a geologist, and therefore speaks according to first-hand knowledge, shows that fossil remains are deposited over many thousands of square miles in widely separated sections of the earth, not only in the opposite order from that required to prove the theory of evolution, [p 20] but in a great variety of orders, demonstrating, as he says, that they cannot be arranged off into ages, but that they simply indicate different forms of life that existed side by side. He then exclaims: How much of the earth's crust would we have to find in this upside down order of the fossils, before we would be convinced that there must be something hopelessly wrong with the theory of Successive Ages which drives otherwise competent observers to throw away their common sense and cling desperately to a fantastic theory in the very teeth of such facts?
Then he tells us that the theory of Successive Ages, with the forms of life appearing on earth in a precise and invariable order, is dead for all coming time for every man who has had a chance to examine the evidence and has enough training in logic and scientific methods to know when a thing is really proved.
And he concludes that the work of strict inductive science has destroyed this “fantastic scheme” forever, and thus leaves the way open to say that life must have originated by just such a literal creation as is recorded in the first chapters of the Bible.
If these statements have any meaning at all, they can mean only that the geological foundation for the theory of evolution has also collapsed.
c. It remains for us to listen to the testimony of a
few more men of science concerning the
whole theory of evolution in general.
[p 21] Professor Virchow, the greatest German authority on physiology, and once a strong advocate of the theory, has said: It is all nonsense. It cannot be proved by science that man descends from the ape or from any other animal. Since the announcement of the theory, all real scientific knowledge has proceeded in the opposite direction.
Professor Tyndall, in an article in the “Fortnightly Review,” said: There ought to be a clear distinction made between science in a state of hypothesis and science in a state of fact. And inasmuch as it is still in its hypothetical stage, the ban of exclusion ought to fall upon the theory of evolution. I agree with Virchow that the proofs of it are still wanting, that the failures have been lamentable, and that the doctrine has been utterly discredited.
Prof. L. S. Beal, physiologist and professor of anatomy in King's College, London, says: The idea of any relation having been established between the non-living and the living by a gradual advance from lifeless matter to the lowest forms of life, and so onward to the higher and more complex, has not the slightest evidence from the facts of any section of living nature of which anything is known.
Professor Zoeckler, of the University of Greifswald, says: The claim that the hypothesis of descent is scientifically secured must most decidedly be denied.